The No. 62 Penn State men's tennis team won its first Big Ten match of the season against Purdue. Now the Nittany Lions meet the Boilermakers again, only this time the stakes are much higher.

The Lions (16-6, 5-5 Big Ten) earned the No. 6 seed for the Big Ten Championships and will face off against the No. 11 seed Purdue (3-16, 0-9) at 2 p.m. today.

The Lions got their first Big Ten win of the season with a 5-2 defeat of the Boilermakers in March after an 0-2 conference start. Purdue seemed like the perfect rebound after the Lions dropped their regular season finale to Michigan last weekend. No match, however, can be overlooked in the Big Ten.

"The way we're looking at it is, we have to stay in the present tense," Penn State coach Jan Bortner said. "That [win against Purdue] happened a long time ago, and now it's irrelevant -- the team has to be ready to go.

"We have to remember that we can only control how we play, not how Purdue is going to."

The Lions should get a boost from sophomore Ryan Berger, their No. 3 singles player, who has been on fire lately, getting the team on the board first in its last four matches. In fact, Berger started his great Big Ten run against Purdue, getting the Lions their first point in the match in March.

"I've got a lot of confidence, now I just want it to carry it in to the Big Tens -- but it's a team game, and we want to win as a team," Berger said of his success in the Big Ten. "Now we're thinking about Purdue in the first round, everything else is in the past -- it's history."

While the Lions are thinking about the present, their hopes of reaching the NCAA Championships for the first time since 1999 rest on going farther than the first round.

In what would be a rematch of a disappointing loss less than a week ago, No. 3 seeded Michigan is waiting for the Lions in the second round.

Stringing together consecutive wins in the Big Ten is difficult enough, but the Lions have to deal with a squad on which half of the players, all freshmen, have never been to the Big Ten Championships.

"[Team youth] is going to be one of the factors. You like to have experience for this," Bortner said. "A good thing is we do have four guys with experience, and we need them to lead the way."

Experienced or not, the Lions must be able to overcome any obstacle to continue a successful Big Ten season. Though weather could be seen as a factor, the Lions should excel in returning outdoors for the championships, which plays to their grinding style.

"[Practicing in windy conditions] was crucial for us. We've been stuck inside, in perfect conditions for four straight days," Bortner said Tuesday, after the team's final home practice of the season. "Today, it was great to get out in this wind -- it's just what we needed."